[Sca-cooks] period cream puffs?

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius adamantius1 at verizon.net
Fri Apr 11 16:10:50 PDT 2008


On Apr 11, 2008, at 5:42 PM, Terry Decker wrote:
> The version of the Catherine de Medici tale with Popelini as  
> Catherine's
> cook seems to come from the 1988 "Larousse Gastronomique."  My 2001  
> edition
> does not appear to contain the tale.

I haven't checked my 1985 Larousse, but I did figure there was a good  
chance there'd be a reference to choux paste (or some other-named  
equivalent) in La Varenne's Patissiere Francoise if choux paste was  
that old (La Varenne being about 100 years after the Medici wedding in  
question).

As it turns out, there's a reference to a large pastry called a  
poupelain in The French Pastry-Cook, and a couple chapters later,  
(it's actually the end of one chapter, another chapter containing a  
single recipe, for clarified butter, needed in both the preceding and  
subsequent recipes -- it's all very stream-of-consciousness). The  
subsequent recipe (after the one for clarified butter) tell us how to  
make little cabbages out of the same paste as for poupelains. Neither  
is filled, at least not in the recipes in this source, and it's made  
somewhat differently from modern pate a choux (the preliminary  
"panade" is not cooked prior to adding eggs, and instead of butter and  
milk, it's made with fresh curd cheese and flour).

In Terence Scully's translated edition (which is where I'm getting all  
this), he states that there's a similar poupelain recipe in a  
contemporary cookbook (~1650's CE or so...) by Nicholas de Bonnefons,  
and one or two other sources.

Scully goes on to mention one of the contemporary sources referring to  
a Belgian cake made in a similar way, filled with a jam-like fruit  
puree after frying. In other words, we have anecdotal evidence for it,  
but no recipe.

I'll have to dig it out again and go over this again in more detail;  
I'm not up for much more typing tonight, but all this does make me  
wonder:

Am I remembering something non-existent, or do we not have, somewhere,  
a fairly detailed recipe for either payn puff or petty peruant, also  
calling for curd cheese kneaded together with flour? I know that the  
references to payn puff in both The Forme of Cury and the Two  
Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books are sketchy, at best. Is there another  
English source for this that I'm not thinking of, or am I thinking of  
one of the nysbeck/myncebeck recipes, at least one of which includes  
cheese curds?

It'd be kind of funny if it turned out there was a 14th-century  
English cook named Poplin responsible for all this... ;-)

Adamantius






"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls,  
when we all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's  
bellies."
			-- Rabbi Israel Salanter




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